


Mesocricetus Auratus

by StBridget



Series: The Hamster Tails [1]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 16:54:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8541166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StBridget/pseuds/StBridget
Summary: When Bozer buys a hamster for one of his film projects, Mac ends up getting attached.  And, being Mac, he builds it a habitat.  And maybe he gets just a bit carried away. . .





	

**Author's Note:**

> Mesocricetus Auratus is the Latin name for the Syrian hamster, the kind most commonly kept as pets.
> 
> This owes a shout-out to mothicalcreatures' Emotional Support Rat saga, although the plot bunny was hoping around before those. That just gave it a little impetus to hatch.

The cage was sitting on the table when Mac got home from a mission. He was battered, bruised, and dead on his feet. He wanted nothing more than a hot shower and to fall into bed. He ignored the addition to the décor, dropping his jacket on top of it on his way to his bedroom and not thinking any more about it.

 

Until the next morning. Feeling somewhat human again, although he still ached, and some of his bruises were turning pretty spectacular colors, Mac wandered out of his room in search of coffee. He noticed his jacket on the table and went to hang it up, surprised to find a hole in the lining. He was sure that hadn’t been there before. “What the hell?” Mac wondered.

 

He looked at where his jacket had been, finally registering the cage. Mac’s mechanical mind cataloged its properties automatically—approximately 15”x10”x15”, wire, plastic bottom, plastic wheel, plastic water bottle with metal nipple, wood shavings—pine, he thought—approximately 2” deep. Environmental scan complete, Mac’s gaze was drawn to the occupant of the cage—a 3” ball of brown and white fur with whiskers and a twitchy nose. “Bozer!” Mac yelled.

 

Mac’s roommate appeared beside him. “What do you want?” Bozer asked.

 

Mac pointed at the cage. “Why is there a rat on the table?”

 

“it’s not a rat, it’s a hamster,” Bozer replied. “I can’t believe you can’t tell the difference.”

 

Mac shrugged. “I was never into small animals as a kid. I’m more of a dog person.” Mac brought the conversation back to the topic at hand. “That doesn’t explain what it’s doing on the table.”

 

“It’s a stunt hamster.”

 

That took Mac aback. “A stunt hamster? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

 

Bozer felt compelled to explain anyway. “It’s for my next project. It’s a rodent action film This little guy’s the hero. He’s going to do all kinds of stunts. The best is this big car chase—he’s going to be weaving in and out dodging bullets, swerving around obstacles, flying over ditches, and all that stuff. It’s going to be awesome!”

 

Mac gave up trying to follow the conversation. “I don’t care. I want it out of the house.”

 

Bozer drew the cage protectively to his chest. “Mac! You can’t mean that!”

 

“I do,” Mac said firmly. Bozer pouted at him. “Bozer, what are we going to do with a rat—sorry, a hamster? Who’s going to take care of it?”

 

“I will,” Bozer replied. “After all, he’s my star.” Bozer turned pleading eyes on Mac. “Please, Mac?”

 

Mac relented. “Okay, fine, but it stays in its cage.”

 

Bozer beamed. “Absolutely!”

 

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As the days went by, Mac found the hamster kind of growing on him. Bozer hadn’t named it (“What are you going to call it?” “Super Hamster.” “No, no way, man, just no.” “But that’s my hero’s name.” “No. We are not going to call it Super Hamster. It needs another name.” “Him.” “Him?” “You can’t call it an it. It’s a him.” “Actually, Bozer, I think it’s a her.” “How can you tell?” “It’s missing some important equipment.” “Oh.”), so Mac took it upon himself. They couldn’t agree on the sex (Bozer insisted it was male, though Mac kept pointing out the obvious anatomical issue), so Mac gave it a nice, generic, unisex name.

 

It took him a while to come up with it, though. Mac would never admit it, but he spent an inordinate amount of time staring at the hamster in its cage, willing it to tell him its name, starting whenever Bozer caught him and hastily moving away, hemming and hawing and making up flimsy excuses. Finally, the perfect name occurred to him. “Whiskers.” He declared.

 

“Whiskers?” Bozer said. “What kind of name is that?”

 

“It’s better than Super Hamster.” Mac retorted.

 

“No, no it’s not. Super Hamster is a bold, heroic name for a bold, heroic hamster,” Bozer argued.

 

“We are not calling it Super Hamster, and that’s final.” Mac said in a tone that brooked no argument.

 

Bozer sighed. “Fine. Whiskers it is.”

 

Bozer didn’t seem interested in Whiskers outside of his project (Mac wondered how that was going—he hadn’t seen any evidence of hamster car chases, but wisely, he deemed it better not to ask), so Mac took it upon himself to oversee the hamster’s care and feeding. There was no way he was going to admit to Bozer how attached he was getting after his initial insistence on getting rid of it, so he surreptitiously did research, slamming his laptop shut whenever someone came near.

 

Mac wasn’t always fast enough, though. Riley caught him one day while he was browsing a veterinary page. She caught just a glimpse of the page before the laptop clicked shut. “Hamsters, huh?”

 

Mac decided to play it cool. “Yeah, Bozer has one.”

 

“I did notice a cage the last time I was over there, but, like you said, I thought it was Bozer’s,” Riley said. “So, how come you’re looking up information?”

 

“I just want to make sure Whiskers is healthy,” Mac said, then blushed as he realized he may have given his feelings for the rodent away.

 

Riley just hummed, letting his slip pass. “Mm-hm. So, is it sick?”

 

“No,” Mac said. “I was just looking into getting her fixed.”

 

“Getting who fixed?” Jack asked, joining them.

 

“Mac’s hamster,” Riley told him.

 

“I thought it was Bozer’s hamster.”

 

“Whiskers,” Riley corrected.

 

Jack was confused. “Whiskers?”

 

“That’s it’s name,” Riley informed him.

 

“Her name,” Mac corrected automatically, realizing too late he wasn’t helping his case that Whiskers was Bozer’s hamster.

 

“So, you want to get her fixed?” Jack asked.

 

“Yeah.” Mac gave up all pretense of disinterest in the hamster and showed his friends the page he’d been looking at. “It says here they should be spayed at 6-8 months.”

 

“How old is it? Sorry, she,” Riley amended when Mac opened his mouth to correct her.

 

“I have no idea,” Mac confessed, “but I figure it’s time.”

 

“If you need a vet, I know one,” Jack offered.

 

“How do you know an exotic animal vet?” Mac asked curiously.

 

It was Jack’s turn to blush. “I, uh, may have dated her a couple of times.”

 

“Ah.” Mac should have guessed. Sometimes it seemed like Jack had dated half of LA. “Yeah, I’ll take her name.”

 

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Mac was impressed with Jack’s lady vet friend. She looked Whiskers over, confirmed it was, indeed, a she, and pronounced her healthy. Mac made an appointment to get her spayed. He spent the entire time she was in surgery checking his phone anxiously for news. He was so distracted, all his co-workers kept having to get his attention. Jack waved a hand in front of his face, Riley poked him in the ribs, and Thornton just glared. Each time, Mac would start guiltily, put his phone down, and turn his attention back to the conversation at hand—for about five minutes. Then the whole cycle would start again. Finally, Mac got a text that Whiskers had come through the surgery with flying colors. Mac breathed a sigh of relief.

 

Mac was very attentive while Whiskers healed. He was concerned when she mostly just slept the first few days, but the vet assured him that was normal. Eventually, she resumed normal activity, nosing around her cage and running in her wheel.

 

That got Mac thinking. That was an awfully small cage with very little to do. If he was Whiskers, he’d go crazy with boredom. Sure, she was probably in excellent shape from all the running, but she must be dying for something else to do.

 

Mac went on line, looking up hamster accessories. He found all kinds of tunnels and platforms, but nothing that looked really exciting. Mac did find a couple of interconnected cubes with a slide he thought was kind of cool, but he figured he could make something just as good, if not better. So he sketched and measured and tinkered and finally finished his materpiece—a hamster jungle gym made mainly of paperclips with several levels to climb, holes to hide in, and a slide made of the bowl of a spoon. Mac was proud of it, and Whiskers seemed to like it, crawling all over it and even sliding down the slide, then racing up to do it again.

 

The jungle gym took up a lot of room, though, and between that and the wheel, the cage was getting kind of crowded. Mac decided it was time to expand. So, he went back online, but the tunnels between two cages looked boring, and once again, Mac decided he could build something better. So he put each of the two cages on blocks and built a tall, plexiglass breezeway between them. Then, he strung paperclips together to make a hamster-sized suspension bridge. Whiskers seemed uncertain at first, putting out a paw tentatively and pulling it back when the bridge swung alarmingly. Soon, though, she was running back and forth over it, apparently loving her new space.

 

Mac didn’t stop there. He kept adding cages and devising different ways of connecting them, and building different structures for Whiskers to climb. He built a cardboard castle, but she chewed through it overnight. So, Mac built one out of wood. She still chewed it, but at least she didn’t completely destroy it.

 

One day when she and Jack were over, Riley noticed the hamster cage—now a whole compound—had taken up the whole table. There were now four cages on different levels, all connected in different ways—the original expansion had the suspension bridge, another had a paper clip ladder, and the third had a rope for Whiskers to climb. Riley gave out a low whistle. “I’m impressed.”

 

Mac rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. “I didn’t want her to get bored,” he said.

 

“I’d say there’s not much chance of that,” Riley said, still staring at the habitat. “When I die, I want to come back as your hamster.”

 

“I thought it was Bozer’s hamster,” Jack said.

 

Mac blushed. “She is. Was. I may have kind of taken over.”

 

Jack eyed Mac’s hamster world. “Ya think?”

 

“Look, will you just keep giving me a hard time about my—the—hamster?”

 

“Hey, not giving you a hard time, buddy,” Jack said, spreading his hands out in innocence. “Just wondering.”

 

“Okay, fine, I have a hamster. Happy now.”

 

“Very,” Jack said.

 

The habitat still held Riley’s attention. “Think you can build me one of these, Mac?”

 

“Only if you suddenly become small and furry,” Mac shot back.

 

“Man, hamsters have all the luck,” she said wistfully, finally tearing herself away.

 

“Never expected you to be jealous of a hamster,” Jack teased.

 

“I wasn’t. That was before I met Mac’s hamster,” Riley retorted.

 

Mac clapped her on the back. “Like you said, maybe in your next life.”

 

“I can only hope,” Riley said.


End file.
